Litany with Outpouring Light

by Nicole Rollender

Divyansh Dwivedi

My son says his body’s full of honey, jarred, electric bees —

You’ve asked me, have you ever heard a death rattle —

I’ve asked back if it’s possible to drown inside yourself, without sighing —

I learned to pray anywhere you can name home or falling leaves or falling —

My son, who wouldn’t drink my milk, smelled of wet petals —

I buried longing within my pelvis, yet the wide sky opening in my chest —

He asks: How long before I burst open with golden flight —

A parent hardly sleeps & prays in snippets, I am the bell, I’m the well for your worries —

God, is that you climbing my stairs? Is it the body of the sun —

I find a note my son started writing crumpled under his bed, Dear Bee King, it’s me —

A window, to eternity, to remembrance’s jar of black seeds waiting —

Crumbs gathered at the bottom of my purse, child of passing time —

Afterlife, afterbirth, after-nights, night from night from wind singing —

I saw you in my dream, falling beside me into another country —

I ask if you heard my death rattle in the dream we shared —

The places we’ve been together, the places with no names —

I remember living & not living —

The echo of bee wings everywhere I want to be —

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A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Palette Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill Journal and West Branch, among many other journals. Nicole is managing editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal, and holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University. She’s also co-founder and CEO of Strand Writing Services. Visit her online: www.nicolemrollender.com.